The dispensing bottle comprises a rigid body in which a reservoir for packaging the product is formed, as well as a device for taking off the packaged product that is mounted sealingly on said body. In particular, the take-off device may comprise a manual-actuation pump that is supplied with packaged product, said pump being arranged to dispense the product under pressure, for example in the form of an aerosol.
In an example application, the bottles according to the invention enable samples of product to be dispensed, in particular for a volume of product packaged in the reservoir that is between 1 and 10 ml. In particular, the samples thus dispensed can enable a client to test the product, the bottles then being referred to as sample test bottles. In a variant, the bottles may be so-called “handbag” bottles in that they make it possible to easily transport a small volume of product, in contradistinction to bottles with a larger capacity, which are in general heavy and bulky since they are expensive.
In these applications, for example for logistic reasons, reasons of practicality or for environmental recycling reasons, it may be desirable to be able to recharge the reservoir with product from a source of said product. This is because it is not very practical for a user to fill the reservoir by means of a small funnel and not ecological to throw away an empty bottle in order to replace it with a full one constituting a refill.
Dispensing bottles are already offered for sale in which the body is equipped with a reservoir filling valve that is arranged to enable a product source to be put in communication with said reservoir. In particular, the valve can open by pressing on the nozzle of the pump of a source bottle, which it is necessary to actuate repeatedly in order to effect the filling, which is an action that is not very intuitive for the user.
There is also known, in particular from the document FR-2 854 131, a method of filling a reservoir that provides for the prior emptying of the reservoir by means of an airless dispensing pump in order to create a negative pressure inside said reservoir, then putting a product source in communication with said pump in order to effect filling by suction through said pump. However, this design requires the use of a dedicated pump that allows both filling and dispensing.
In addition, this design does not allow initial filling of the dispensing bottle in a satisfactory fashion, whether by the users and/or by the distributors at the point of sale. This is because, in particular when the bottle is assembled in the packaging factory, an initial filling of the reservoir with product must be carried out prior to the recharging by suction. Thus the distributors of these bottles must have a dedicated bottle for each of the products that it offers for sale.
In particular, for dispensing product samples, a sample test bottle must be provided for each of the products since filling said bottle cannot be carried out simply at the time of handing to the customer. Thus product distributors have a considerable number of sample test bottles that all resemble each other and among which they must find the one that they seek to hand to a customer.
Moreover, some makes may require that the bottles for their product not be fillable subsequently by the users, while benefitting from a simplification in the initial filling of said bottle. In particular, it may be required for the sample test bottles to be fillable only once.